The Strava

The Strava App (or website) has become pretty popular amongst road and mountain bikers. It is a good way to log your miles and the website has turned me on to some big hills in the area that I was unaware of, and that's about it.

The one feature that I have come to dislike is the King of the Mountain (KOM). At first I thought that it was cool that I could "race" against local strangers and compare times, but this has proven to be almost pointless. Sure, I am the "King" of this hill or that hill, but that only includes the small group of Strava users. I have never finished in the top 30 of a big (100+ people) race so how could I even begin to think that I am the fastest up a particular hill? I've also never been in a true road race and if I was I bet I'd be even further back once I reached my expected category.

I also don't like that people make downhill KOM's, or even flats for that matter. You can't go on the website without seeing orange lines all over the map. The other thing that gets me is when people make the same hill into several different KOM's. Take this hill in South Saint Paul for example:

There are 3 different routes, all up the same hill that vary by .1 mile. Are the users who created the 2nd and 3rd segments bitter that they didn't get the KOM so they tweaked it slightly so that they would?

I think that Strava needs to make a few tweaks to its KOM formula. In order to create a KOM the route should have to exceed a formula of distance vs. grade. I am sure this is how Cat. 4 and above climbs are measured, but they could just drop the scoring down a bit.

I'll still continue to use Strava to track my miles and so that I have the ability on group rides to yell at people to go faster because they are "Screwing up my Strava time." But as far as the KOMs go, I'll just assume that there is a non-Strava user who commutes to work and crushes my times on a daily basis.

Lame

My time on the bike since the Almanzo has been rather blah to say the least. I got in a few rides here and there, but nothing great. I took the Gary Fisher out a week ago and broke my XO derailleur in two and bent the hanger. I had to order a new hanger and I'll either have to put the stock X.7 back on, or take the X.9 off the Pugsley. Either way, this fucking sucks.

The Wednesday night group ride was fun. There was a double rainbow and the threat of rain kept the group moving at a swift pace.

I think this is my "road ride" year. I just can't get that into MTB. I don't know if its from too many laps or that I can ride about twice as far on the road as I can on the trails and I'd rather get the miles in.

This past Saturday Tom, Porter, Todd, and I set out on a three trail bike tour. We knew it was going to be hot, but didn't anticipate the humidity that well. We hit 95% of B.C. which proved to be much more humid at 9am than I have ever experienced. I was sweating quite a bit about 3 miles in and hoped that it wouldn't continue. As we made our way towards Carver I started to feel better and getting more warmed up. The two laps at Carver felt pretty good and I was ready to head out to Afton. The ride out there felt great despite the wind and we made it there rather quickly. Once at Afton I could really feel the heat coming on and fatigue was starting to set in a bit. As we started on the trail (Which I was very poorly geared for; 2:1)  I could tell in the first few switchback climbs that I wasn't going to be making a lot of climbs out there. I toughed it out and only walked parts of Manhandler and Shady Lane so that was a small moral victory. By the time we finished the lap I was so exhausted that I decided to accept Tom's offer of a ride home. It was a tough decision, but when I thought about the plans for the evening I didn't want to be exhausted and piss off the GF.  We ended up riding a little over 38 miles in 80-95 degrees. Not too shabby, but I think I need to get in one more long ride before the Cheq 100.